Mod Podge Silhouette Canvas

This project was originally shared over at Tatertos and Jello as part of Jen’s Summer Social. I’m sharing it here in case you missed it!

My kids just finished up their first year on a traditional school schedule. We’d been on year round before that, which means summer break = 3 weeks. This is our first real live 3 month long summer. I’m loving it, but there are days when “I’M BORED!” comes out of people’s mouths. So, I wanted to come up with a project we could work on together. We came up with this silhouette canvas.

(The kid on the table in pajamas in the middle of the day in the background is totally optional.)

We tried to pick pages with a lot of color (as opposed to black and white text), but that was really the only direction I gave them.

Once you have a whole bunch of cut up magazines, you’ll want to Mod Podge them to a canvas. There’s also no rhyme or reason to this, just make sure you cover the entire canvas.

No need to have a panic attack that everything’s not smooth…some lumpy/puckered/not perfect parts are encouraged!

Once it’s good and dry, trace your silhouette with a pencil on the canvas.

I went with this bird on a branch design from the Silhouette library. I think a big initial or monogram would look fabulous as well. Or how about a chevron pattern on the whole thing? (That was for you, Jen )

Once you’ve traced, you’ll want to fill in the rest of the canvas with craft paint. There are no pictures of this step because my daughter/back up photographer and I were both doing the painting.

YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY STOP NOW. I like this look and I probably would have stopped now if our silhouette had been something more graphic.

I decided to take some sandpaper to the painted area so that some of our magazines would peek through.

Again, YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY STOP NOW! There’s really no wrong way to do this…just go with what you like!

I applied some stain next.

I put it on streaky and wiped some off.

YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY STOP NOW.

I, however, did not. I watered down a few more shades of acrylic paint and did some more streaking (not that kind…what kind of blogger do you think I am?) and a little splattering.

Hi,
I absolutely ADORE this idea! I love it when I can get my kids involved in my crafting without wrecking TOTAL havok on my house with the supplies and process. This looks fairly simple and clean enough (dont worry they WILL find a way to make a mess) that my 5 & 6yr old can help out and have an absolute BALL! I like the product at every stage, but I think I will have to stop mine right before the very last stage. I also was wondering what other materials do you think would work well in the place of the news paper? I wonder if OLD photos that werent that great could be used. You know how you get duplicates printed and never give them away. I think it would be unique to see your kiddos face smiling out at you from the center of a design. Especially if you use the word “Family” or the monogram idea. Anyway thanks for this and I cant wait to do it! Also I put a link to this on my blog. I hope you dont mind. Thanks again!!

i love this and want to do it, but when i click the link for silhouette, all i get is a website to buy machines. i have tried going through the whole site, but still can’t find sihouettes. do i have to create an acct or something?
any feed back would be great. thanks.

The Silhouette is a machine, and the bird design I used is one of the downloads from that site. I’m sure searching for bird silhouette (or something similar) would bring some images that would work. Good luck!

[...] it into place. But I am stumped with what to put onto the wall. I did try the art that Char from crap I’ve made did with magazines and a shape (I did his name), but it was a HUGE craft fail! So if you have any [...]

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